Amazon has made its upgraded AI-powered assistant, Alexa+, available to all customers in the U.S. as of Wednesday. The feature is now offered for free to Prime members across various devices, while non-Prime users can access Alexa+ for free through the Alexa website or mobile app, albeit with certain restrictions.
Alexa+ is designed to engage in natural language conversations, enabling users to ask follow-up questions and engage in interactive chats. This AI assistant combines Amazon’s foundational models with those from other companies to enhance its capabilities beyond basic tasks like managing smart home devices, setting timers, and providing news updates. Alexa+ can now handle more complex tasks such as itinerary planning, calendar management, recipe search and storage, movie recommendations, homework assistance, and topic exploration.
Integrations with various services like Ticketmaster, Uber, Expedia, and Yelp allow Alexa to facilitate tasks like scheduling dinner reservations and booking rides. Amazon has not disclosed specific user adoption figures for these advanced features.
During the beta testing phase, Alexa customers were given the flexibility to try out the new AI capabilities or revert to the previous version as needed. The company has not shared data on the prevalence of autonomous task completion by the AI assistant.
Source: TechCrunch